


Witchcraft

by Truth



Category: Steven Brust - Jhereg series
Genre: M/M, Spoilers, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2004, recipient:Elsandry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-26
Updated: 2010-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/pseuds/Truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the things you learn are entirely unexpected. and not everything has to make sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Witchcraft

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elsandry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsandry/gifts).



  


## Witchcraft

  
Fandom: [Steven Brust - Jhereg series](http://yuletidetreasure.org/get_fandom_quicksearch.cgi?Fandom=Steven%20Brust%20-%20Jhereg%20series)

  
Written for: Elsandry in the Yuletide 2004 Challenge

by [Truth](http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/contact.cgi?filename=7/witchcraft)  


The party at Castle Black has been going on since before I was born - which isn't as long as it feels, sometimes. The guest list is as diverse as the composition of the Empire itself, perhaps more so, considering some of the more unusual attendees. I'm not sure that the Necromancer, for example, counts herself as an actual subject of the Empire. She has little use for the living as a whole and I'm not all that certain of her stance on her fellow undead.

I've never been issued an invitation to attend the party, although I've been there often enough. By the time I knew the host well enough that I didn't want to kill him any more, or vice versa, which is slightly more relevant in this case, I found myself in charge of security for the place.

By `place', I mean Castle Black. You may have heard of it, it's the only giant floating castle around these days. Morrolan e'Drien likes to make a certain impression and as his cousin is Dragon Heir and he's second in succession with a good chance at Warlord, it's one of those impressions that it pays to heed. Powerful, bloodthirsty, cold-blooded bastard just about covers it. It's amazing that we get on as well as we do.

So imagine the sort of party that you might find in a giant, floating castle. It's an improbability wrapped inside an impossibility and you will find yourself nibbling delicacies and sipping exquisite rare wines as you rub shoulders with legends. It's all quite cozy, really.

I get a certain kick out of strolling through the crowded hall, partly because of the grey and black of my clothing and the Jhereg insignia blazoned across the back of my cloak, partly because I'm an Easterner. Nothing ruins a party for a certain type of Dragaeran than to find an Easterner staring over his shoulder. Well, figuratively speaking, anyway. Humans are shorter than Dragaeran's. The only shoulder I could look over without difficulty would be Aliera's, and she always takes care to look taller in public.

It may be petty of me, but I enjoy the expressions on their faces as I move through the crowd. Morrolan must enjoy it at some level as well, or he wouldn't let me get away with it. As long as I don't offer anyone direct insult, his honor goes un-besmirched but it's still a fine line to tread as most of them regard my very existence as an insult.

Aliera finds the whole thing amusing, but I've never pretended to understand her sense of humor. So does Loiosh, but then, he's nothing but an overgrown lizard.

 _"I heard that, boss."_

... albeit a very useful one.

**

 _"You need to understand that everything has a price."_

I remember nodding solemnly, eleven years old and certain that I truly understood.

"This is important, Vladimir," he frowned at me, just a little, and I felt for a moment that I'd somehow let him down.

"Everything has a price, Noish-pa," I agreed, slightly abashed and trying to see how I'd disappointed him.

"Perhaps you're too young for this particular lesson," he reached out to extinguish the candle that sat between us. "It's one that some people never learn."

"I am old enough, Noish-pa," I assured him, defensive at the thought that he had judged me and somehow found me wanting.

He looked at me for a long time, hand still hovering beside the candle. "Power demands sacrifice, Vladimir. The more power that you expend, the greater that sacrifice will be. Sorcery isn't witchcraft and the sacrifices that they demand are very different."

"I understand, Noish-pa."

But I didn't - not really. The lesson he wanted teach me was one that I didn't learn until much, much later.

**

Once, not so long ago, I did something very, very foolish.

... more foolish than usual, and spare me the wisecracks. I get enough of that from Loiosh.

I cast a spell that didn't exist to fetch a vial of something I wasn't sure about and which did not belong to me, to a place where I was not supposed to be after doing several things which were widely regarded as either suicidal or impossible or both. My insanity didn't end there, either. I took the vial of what I'd been told was the blood of a god and, with the help of the Dragon Heir to the Throne of the Imperium, got Morrolan to work the stuff into his bloodstream.

You will note that I wasn't foolish enough to tell either of them exactly what the stuff was. I think that Morrolan suspected - particularly after he was able to actually leave the Paths of the Dead... but he was polite enough never to say anything.

At least I think that he didn't. I wasn't exactly aware of much after that for quite some time.

**

 _Sorcery, at least for the purposes I put it to, is about as intimate as your average pipe wrench. It's a tool, a useful and versatile one, but hardly something to write soul-wrenching poetry about. Not that anyone I know writes poetry about witchcraft, either, but if I ever found myself with the sudden urge to do so, it would at least be possible._

Something about blood and the sound of your own heart, the smell of incense or pungent herbs, the **feel** of bending things to your will....

Less like poetry and more like pornography - something I have far more experience with even if only in a professional sense. I never claimed to be an artist, even with words. My loss and the literary world's gain, I suppose.

Witchcraft is intimate, for lack of a better word. You turn your will against the world around you and seek till you find the place where what you want to achieve is possible. It's possible to do spells with another person, or a familiar, it even makes some of them far easier - that's Loiosh's job. But it's intimate, as I said. This is why most witches prefer keeping a familiar to working a spell with another person.

**

I need to remember that Morrolan is not most witches.

I remember being slightly shocked when I found out that Morrolan knew anything about witchcraft at all. Dragaerans don't practice witchcraft... not since the end of the Interregum, when sorcery began working again and they could go back to ostentatious displays of power.

Like floating castles, for instance.

But Morrolan is a practicing witch, among other, less savory practices. Pre-Interregum sorcery is not for the faint of heart or those who want to avoid execution - but I didn't find out about that until much later.

"Morrolan, my job description is a long and complicated document that took a Yendi to translate into terms that I could understand. However, I'm absolutely certain that there isn't a clause in there anywhere which says that I'm supposed to help you with experimental spells."

One dark eyebrow arched elegantly upward as Morrolan looked down his nose at me. Not a difficult feat, sadly.

I hadn't suspected anything out of the ordinary when Fentor had pulled me from the party, telling me that Morrolan had something for me to look into. Looking into things for Morrolan is part of what I do... when I'm not looking into things for myself, that is. Head of security or not, I have my own business to run and the competition is cut-throat. Literally.

Instead, I found myself in his study, faced with a number of carefully chosen items which told me, in no uncertain terms, exactly what Morrolan wanted from me - even without Loiosh's helpful diagnosis. If that hadn't been enough, Morrolan had then explained it to me in excruciating detail.

Not at all intimidated by either the eyebrow or his expression of polite disbelief, I continued, "You're probably just as good a witch as I am, if not better. You've certainly had more time to practice." Several centuries more, in point of fact. "Not only that, I'm not sure I remember exactly how I did it."

Another lie and not a very wise one. It doesn't pay to lie to Dragonlords. On the other hand, I didn't exactly want to go into what I'd done during that very foolish episode with the vial and the blood, but if he pressed the issue....

Well, it wasn't exactly a situation where I had any indication of how he might take it. It's not as if I'd ever seen anyone tell him that he probably had the blood of a god running through his veins so that I'd be able to judge.

Of course, knowing the circles he moved in, I could have simply been out of the room at the time.

"Vlad, I like to think that we are friends."

Oh shit. I definitely didn't like where this was headed.

 _"Me either, boss."_

 _"Not now, Loiosh."_

Morrolan continued, either oblivious to or ignoring our little exchange. "This has the potential to be of great use to me - to us both. I should like to explore it further and, as you are the one who invented the spell, it is your aid that I shall require."

It didn't sound much like a polite request, but for a Dragonlord addressing a Jhereg, it was the equivalent of a polite note and an entire floral bouquet. If he hadn't brought our friendship into it, I would have turned him down flat.

Time had definitely taught him a thing or two about handling me.

"Tell me what you want me to do."

**

 _There's a price for witchcraft, just as there's a price for everything else. It's just that sometimes the price is much higher. You pay for the power that you wield with your own strength and energy._

Working with another witch gives you proportionately more power and also spreads the drain somewhat. It makes a connection between you, even if only a casual one; even if it only lasts for the duration of the spell. A familiar holds a more complicated bond, and one that runs far deeper.

You need to trust someone that you're going to work witchcraft with. Completely.

**

It wasn't that I didn't remember what I'd done when I put together the original spell. In fact, some of it was pretty permanently etched into my memory. It's more a matter of ... distance. It all seems far away, now. I don't know how much was significant, either. Well, it was all significant or it wouldn't have happened that way, but....

"Stop equivocating." Morrolan's tone indicated an increasing lack of patience. We'd been at it for two solid hours by then, so I couldn't exactly blame him. I was further from understanding how I'd managed to put the spell together than when I started and I guess my frustration was beginning to show.

"It's like the spell created itself," I offered, not for the first time. "I concentrated on what I needed and it put itself together."

"Witchcraft is bending the physical world to your will," Morrolan told me, echoing my grandfather's first lecture to me on the subject. "It simply means that you're a very powerful witch."

Loiosh, half asleep in the crook of my arm, made a noise that might have been a laugh. I ignored him. "Not everything is an exercise in logic, especially witchcraft. I can't explain it, I can only tell you what happened."

"There's still an aspect that doesn't fit." Morrolan was frowning now, an expression that I returned as he leafed through his notes.

"We've been over everything that I remember," I said, gently scratching Loiosh and fighting back the urge to follow his lead and fall asleep on the desk and leave Morrolan to sort it all out.

 _"We, boss."_

 _"What?"_

 _"That `we' remember."_

"That **we** remember," I corrected myself. "There isn't any more, Morrolan. That's all there is."

He looked up at me, frown fading into an expression that I didn't like in the least. "No, there's still one thing unaccounted for."

I rose from my seat with as much dignity as I could muster, considering the nearly comatose jhereg still sprawled across my arm. "I'm afraid that any further experimentation will have to wait. I'm overdue for a look at the accounts with Kragar...."

He was in front of me before I'd done more than turn toward the door. This is one of the problems of dealing with people who've had several centuries of practice in close combat and other more interesting practices. Morrolan moves very swiftly when he has a mind to, and my instinctive reaction to being towered over is to draw a weapon. I was unfortunately hampered by a large, reptilian creature with wings clinging to one arm. Not that he was there for long. My surge of alarm had him in the air between us even as a dagger appeared in my hand.

Morrolan ignored our reaction, something not only difficult to do but verging on the suicidal. Then again, he's learned a lot about me and even I'm not foolish enough to attack Morrolan e'Drien in his own castle - even if there's no sign of an obvious weapon. It's not always a good thing when people know your reactions well enough to predict you.

 _"Sorry, Loiosh... false alarm."_

Slowly calming, Loiosh found a place on the desk, sensibly out of the way in case of further sudden movement. I replaced my weapon and we both stared at Morrolan, who was still standing between me and the door.

"What was in that vial, Vlad? What did you need so badly that you managed to call it to you on the Paths of the Dead?"

Some might argue that I was the one being unreasonable here. Morrolan had pumped the damn stuff into his veins on the advice of a man who was not only a Easterner and a Jhereg, but an assassin as well... and also the reason that he'd found himself trapped in the Paths of the Dead in the first place. So an answer of some sort, now that I'd delayed as long as humanly possible, was required.

"It was something I was holding onto for Keira." I admitted grudgingly. "I'm not sure what it was."

"You must have had some idea, or you wouldn't have risked killing yourself to get it." He left the question of **why** I'd done it unspoken and I was grateful for that small mercy at least. I still had no idea.

"Nothing worth mentioning, really."

... I knew he wouldn't let it go this time.

 _"Concentrate, Vladimir."_

My grandfather was somewhere very far away, but I could hear his voice clearly. I stared at the candles between us, watched my own hand sketching the symbol that I wanted on the table between them. I could feel the power slowly growing with every line that my finger made in the dust on the tabletop.

"Why you expend your power is sometimes just as important as how. Why, Vladimir... never forget the why."

"If you didn't know what it was, how did you get it to come?"

The question hung between us for a long moment. Morrolan's expression was bland to the point of almost non-expression and I had nothing left to say.

"Let us try it, then." Morrolan reached across the desk to pick up his notes, still as bland as if he hadn't just administer the equivalent of a challenge to duel to the death.

Damn the bastard. Working a spell together would let him know _exactly_ what I thought had been in that vial. Not to mention the small fact that the main reason I'd put myself and him through it all wasn't through any affection for him, but mainly an attempt to stick it to the gods.

Bastards, the lot of them.

 _"Boss...."_ Loiosh knew me better than I did, sometimes, but I'd already made up my mind.

I met Morrolan's eyes. "All right."

 _"... this isn't the worst idea you've ever had."_

 _"Thank you for that."_

 _"It's not far off though."_

 _"Shut up, Loiosh."_

**

 _I didn't often practice witchcraft with others, convenient as it can be. Part of my closeness with my grandfather was that he was my teacher. He knew me better than anyone, save my familiar. Loiosh knows me better than anyone alive._

But it's a forced intimacy, for the most part. You end up very close to another person for a few brief minutes, you learn a great deal... but unless you knew them very well from the start, it often doesn't make very much sense.

Your senses become more acute, you become very aware of everything around you, the power in your hands, the person that you are working with... and afterward you're too tired to process any of it correctly anyway.

It lacks the impersonal touch of sorcery... but the immediacy and heightened awareness brings with it its own dangers.

The why is just as important as the how... and the price can be far higher than you may find yourself willing to pay.

**

I'd never worked a spell with Morrolan. I knew that he was a witch, and one who knew what he was doing, but I also knew that he was a sorcerer and a blood-thirsty bastard who wielded one of the Seventeen Great Weapons.

I also knew that I was the better witch.

Don't ask why. Witchcraft is all about belief. Self-doubt will leave you dead on the floor surrounded by the ruins of your spell, your mind burned out and your body a twitching husk.

I followed Morrolan to his workroom. I'd seen it once before, briefly. He had everything imaginable in there in one form or another, including a large, stuffed jhereg mounted on a stand.

Loiosh chose to stay in Morrolan's study. _"This one, I don't think you need me for, boss."_

I had to agree. I wasn't doing this out of a desire to see the spell again... and I was already convinced that it would fail. Therefore, I let Morrolan cast the spell, keeping myself in a role whereby I'd only be supplying power, not motivation.

The knives, the white candle, the string with nine knots, a sprig of parsley, the miniature copper kettle, the bones, the leather... he even produced some of the strange, dry black dirt that I'd noticed in the Paths of the Dead. I didn't ask him where he'd gotten it or why.

I stood beside him and just to his left, one hand on his shoulder to approximate Loiosh's role as best possible. Sometimes symbolism is everything.

As Loiosh had, I gathered the strands of power and held the woven spell together as Morrolan bent his will to the task. It was a masterful effort - Morrolan was indeed a skilled witch, and I could feel the power and the strange rhythm of the first time as the spell grew and twisted between us.

It failed anyway. Either Morrolan knew me for the liar that I was and didn't believe that it would succeed either, or the presence of the Cycle had been a part of the spell itself. Or perhaps it was Loiosh's participation during the original creation of the spell that was the missing piece.

In any case, we were left staring at a stiletto buried in the surface of the wooden table, tired and irritable and with nothing to show for our troubles. After a moment, Morrolan turned, transferring his stare to me.

"The blood of a god...."

Well at least **I** hadn't gotten anything out of it. Morrolan had apparently used our connection through the spell to search for the information I had been unwilling to give. I looked at Morrolan and couldn't decide if his expression was one of anger or shock.

"That's what she told me. I didn't believe her at the time. Not really."

He continued to stare at me. Shock, then.

"It was all I could think of," I could hear the defensiveness in my own voice and it made me angry. "You've got nothing to complain of," I snapped. "At least you're still alive. If I hadn't done it, at considerable risk to myself, you'd be haunting the Paths of the Dead in a purple robe."

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" **There** was the anger. It was strangely comforting to see the more familiar emotion on that angular face.

"No, and neither do you. I have it on very good authority that it's never been done before." I glared back him. "And before you ask, it was Sethra who told me so. I posed it as a hypothetical question."

That gave him pause. I took the opportunity to turn away, heading angrily for the door.

 _"Loiosh, we're leaving."_

The hand at my elbow caught me by surprise and almost bought Morrolan a blade to the throat. Again, he was used to my ways. It pays to be familiar with the natural reactions of jumpy assassins if you're going to let them have the run of your home. He'd let go and was out of the range before I'd finished moving.

We stared at each other over the blade for a long moment.

"Why?"

"... because I wouldn't leave my worst enemy in that place." It was surprising how much bitterness was packed into that sentence. I'd dragged Morrolan there, demanding that he accompany me when there was a chance that I could escape, but he could not. It had not been my intention to have him accept a literal death sentence, just a moment of pettiness so that I'd have an excuse to be angry when my ridiculous request was refused. He'd been willing to do it because it had been Aliera's soul on the line... and because no one **wanted** to be Dragon Heir - they all wanted to be Warlord.

He'd been willing to give up even that for her, however. Dragonlords were all about honor.

"And that's all?"

No, that wasn't all, but I had no better answer to give him. My reasons were even less logical than his own.

"Why did you trust me?" My turn to question. "We weren't exactly friends."

"... because you didn't leave when we gave you the chance. You could have walked away and left me there. Your job was done."

Circular logic. I couldn't have left him there and he couldn't repay my sacrifice with anything less than trust; despite the fact that we had spent our entire brief acquaintance in a state of mutual loathing. Curiosity was another matter altogether, however, and something that was wholly Morrolan. Most Dragonlords didn't bother with it, Aliera being the other notable exception in my experience.

"I see." I didn't see at all. Energy spent, I simply wasn't thinking quickly enough to attempt to follow it - not that the way most Dragaeran's thought was something I could easily follow.

"Do you?" He wrapped long fingers around my wrist, moving the blade from between us. I let him do it, still looking at him with tired incomprehension. "I think not."

 _"Boss, are you all right?"_ Loiosh's interjection was somehow very far away. My attention was firmly, shockingly centered on Morrolan's fingers tightening around my wrist and the mouth sealed hungrily to mine.

Dragaerans don't fancy Easterners - of either gender. Easterners might fancy the tall, strange beauty of the elves, but I'd never heard of one pursuing it. Not one who'd lived anyway. And I liked Eastern women, Szandi, Sheila... the curves and smiles and laughs - they way the convinced me to spend all my money in a haze of good times and easy sex.

All that chased through my mind, but the lingering connection of the spell, not to mention several centuries of experience on Morrolan's side, held me where I was. If I'd still been thinking, I might have blamed it on shock.

He eventually let me go.

Still in a daze, I let myself out, finding the dagger still in my hand in the process and quietly putting it away. I collected Loiosh, ignoring his puzzled inquiries as to why I was acting so strange. He'd pick it all up soon enough. It wasn't as though I'd be able to stop thinking about it anytime soon.

By the time I reached the main doors, allowing Lady Teldra to wish me a gracious good-bye, I'd gathered myself enough to teleport back to my office. For once, the transition didn't make me reject the contents of my stomach.

I **did** blame that on shock.

I sat there for a very long time, trying to figure out had just happened... what had changed between us with a simple spell. I still liked Eastern women, but Morrolan had just changed everything.

... and I still didn't understand.

At Loiosh's urging, I finally took myself home; no closer to understanding and uncertain that I wanted it.

 _"Everything has a price, Vladimir."_

My grandfather is a wise man. I'm rather less so.

 _"Why you expend your power is sometimes just as important as how."_

His lessons always held more than one meaning, but I'd always assumed he'd been trying to teach me about magic. I seriously doubt, however, that he realized I'd be thinking of his words in conjunction with working witchcraft with intent to deceive and having that lead to being ruthlessly kissed by one of the most powerful men in Dragaera.

I was still having trouble believing it myself.

Finally giving in to exhaustion, I collapsed and dreamed of a heated mouth against mine.

   
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